The Koi Keeper
by Maelinis
Summary: Though she has many types of creatures, Mya's favorite would have to be the koi. She goes down to the Stream often, scooping out the koi eggs before others can take them, or going to the Koi Pond to toss in offerings, hoping for the pond's inhabitants to gift her another special egg for her own secret pond. Because of her love for koi, the other magi call her the Koi Keeper...
1. Prologue

The Keep stood proudly in the mid-morning sunlight as a young magi set out from the Keep's grand entrance with a Direwolf trotting along behind. While the magi walked down the dusty path to the glittering waters of the Stream, the Direwolf cast its nose about on the ground, searching for interesting scents.

Unseen and ignored by the young magi and her Direwolf, two other magi were leaning against the walls of the Keep to rest on their way back from a late night venture. The older of the two kept looking down into a sack from which he had placed the eggs they'd found on the journey, while the younger of them suddenly looked up and saw the magi who was headed for the Stream.

"Who's that?" the young man asked, pointing at the figure as it descended down to the banks of the Stream.

The old man looked up briefly and said, "Why, that's Mya and one of her Direwolves of course."

Down by the Stream, Mya scanned the water for a moment, her Direwolf pacing the grassy banks of the Stream behind her. She reached out, as if to grab an egg, but then withdrew her hand, which held nothing. After a short while of more scanning, she stood up, wiping her hands on her robes, and began walking back up the path. When the path offered the option to go east, to Lake Lakira, Mya took it. Her Direwolf ran ahead, doubling back for her whenever it deemed it had gone a little too far, tongue lolling from its mouth and tail wagging contentedly.

"Where do you think she'll be going now?" the youth asked, curious.

"Probably to the Koi Pond," said the older man, gruffly. "She goes down there a lot, or so I've heard. Haven't you heard of her? Oh, right, you're barely a first year. Well, Mya's been here for quite a while. She made it extremely clear back in her second year that she liked koi fish, so we've got her dubbed as the Koi Keeper. She's nice. Everybody likes her and if you stay here for at least a year, you end up hearing about her and meeting her at least once. Though now that I think of it, I've never seen the place where she keeps her koi. She must have thousands by now, and they can't possibly all fit in one of those small courtyard ponds in the Keep. I do know she doesn't put them back in the Koi Pond, Lake Lakira, or the Stream though. No one has ever seen her do that. But sometimes she does go down to the lake's edge and we'd see one of her koi surface slightly as if it were waiting for her."

As his attention diverts away from the sack in his hands and he drifts off into thoughtful mutterings, the first year turns back to look at the silhouette of the Koi Keeper as she traveled along the dusty path towards the Koi Pond, no doubt in search of another koi egg to care for and raise.


	2. Offerings

The surface of the Koi Pond glittered in the morning sunlight as Mya pushed aside some ferns that ringed the water's edge. The water was smooth and unbroken, save for the occasional ripple as some fish rose up to the surface. Looking down, she saw the smooth heads of several large koi fish as they gather near the shallows expectantly.

"Oh, right," she says to no one in particular, and, reaching into a pouch, takes out a handful of gold coins. With a toss, she flung the coins out in a wide arc, watching as the little glittering bits of metal broke up the smooth mirror surface into a bunch of rippling rings.

Mya watched the koi carefully, trying to guess their expressions. They opened and closed their mouths like any other fish, gills fanning out as they breathed. But when none moved forward, she knew that her offering had not been enough. Even so, she dug out another handful of coins, and instead of throwing them in this time, she flicked them in one by one, as though she were playing a game of chance. And she continued this for a while, tossing in handfuls of coins before waiting a spell in case her offerings were accepted, until she'd run out of gold in her pouch and had to either watch the koi or go back to her room in the Keep to get some more.

"So today's not my lucky day, isn't it?" she asked the fish watching her. But she didn't feel bitter. Having been here multiple times and having seen others striving for months at a time to come up with a suitable offering had taught her long ago that the koi couldn't be rushed. Either you had a good offer, or you kept offering until they decided you were worthy enough of receiving a special type of koi egg.

Mya walked around the shoreline, well aware of the koi fish watching her from the depths of the pond. She felt herself sinking into the soft sandy shores of the pond as she made her way to a mossy rock hidden by an overhang of ferns and other tall shrubbery. And she sat on that rock, where there was already a spot where the moss had been rubbed away, obviously a mark that people came down here often to sit and reflect upon things.

She took out another pouch from the array of little leather and cloth bags hanging from a thong that went around her waist. This one had a smoky scent, and made no noise when she shook it, but there was definitely something inside.

Mya reached in, and pulled out a tiny piece of dried meat and nibbled on the edges of the morsel. Often, while traveling, she would get hungry and look around, only to realize she had forgotten to bring provisions or otherwise, and had not brought a companion with her. Her little pouches of dried food would help her in these times, and right now, although she didn't really need it, it felt good to be able to do something other than stare at the koi, even though they were very pretty.

Turning her line of sight back to the pond, she noticed one of the smaller koi seemed to be eyeing her pouch of food.

"Do you want some?" Mya asked, even though she knew it would not respond.

But she tossed in a piece anyway, and the small fish leaped out of the water to catch it before the bigger ones could get in his way. And thus began the continuation of a simple tradition, where she would come in the mornings to give the pond offerings and end up feeding the koi even if the offerings came away with no reward.

"Oh, you're a pretty one," she'd say when a koi leaped out and flicked its tail.

"You're pretty, too," she'd concede, when another fish strove to be complimented as well.

And whenever the brilliant white and red of a Ruby Koi or when the pastel hues of a Dragon Koi leaped out, she would squeal in delight at seeing their beautiful colors.

People often wouldn't stop to say nice things to the koi fish, more interested in throwing in their offers and hoping for a reward, but Mya was different. She loved these fish, and she even had a secret pond of her own, hidden in the southernmost tip of the Jungle of Raza to keep her own koi. She would've preferred to keep it in the Silva Forest, which had turned out to be too far away, or the land between the Keep and the Alasre Mountains, but the land there had been too well-known. But not the jungle. Despite the Raza being on the map, the land beneath the canopy is only ever explored by Nagas and the beasts that live in the jungle itself. As far as she knew, nobody else knew that this pond was there. It was created with magic, and hidden by magic as well, and none but she and her creatures knew of its existence...she hoped.

The Raza had been the perfect place, within a day of traveling from the Keep. She often had to spend the night there, but magis are all used to one another not being there for a few nights, because everybody had to go on expeditions and journeys to find special creatures once in a while.

She absentmindedly threw another piece of food to the koi, thinking of her own pond hidden in the Raza as she did so. Oh, those guys loved it when she went to visit them, although she often didn't have too much of a reason to when they could just appear in Lake Lakira to visit _her_ unless she was bringing a new koi to them. But it would've been too difficult to explain the presence of a whole school of koi fish suddenly appearing in the lake, and the other lake-dwellers wouldn't be too excited about the sudden intrusion. So she told them to only call to her from the lake if they really needed her.

So she picked up koi eggs from the Stream often, taking some time to hatch them and bond with them before taking them to the Raza. This was the only way she could visit her koi without it being seemingly pointless to the other magis.

Suddenly, Mya realized she'd fed the koi just about everything. She stood up slowly, telling the koi that she'd given them everything while tying the pouch back to her waist thong. As she pulled the knot tight, her hand hit another pouch, which produced a jingly noise that sounded a lot like gold. Eager for one more offering before leaving, she pulled it open and scooped out a small handful of coins.

It wasn't much, but an offering is an offering, so she threw it in. Immediately, the koi in the pond parted down the middle of the group and one swam up the open space and there she was, presented with an egg.

As Mya reached down to pick up the egg, she noticed it was a trio of Fabari eggs. These eggs always seemed to be stuck together in trios, strangely enough, and they were common rewards to be picked up via the Koi Pond, and because they were so common people who got them were often slightly disappointed, as Mya was now. She'd been hoping for a Ruby Koi, or maybe an Amethyst Koi, or something better, but she supposed you couldn't rush them. There was always the regular koi eggs to pick up from the Stream though.

"Thank you," she told the Koi Pond anyway, and headed back towards the Keep to begin the process of hatching and raising the egg.


	3. A Dragon Koi

On her way back to the Keep with her Fabari eggs in a little sack, Mya also picked up her Direwolf, whom she'd allowed to go roam the Keep grounds for as long as she stayed at the Pond. She'd whistled, and he'd come.

"Come on, Anghe," she'd said, patting her Direwolf on the head. "Let's check the Stream one more time and then we'll go inside."

Now, she was kneeling on the shores of the Stream for the second time that morning, scanning the glittering waters as they brought with them, eggs. Several other young magi were also kneeling up and down the banks of the Stream, all waiting for an egg that they didn't have yet or liked best. Tactfully, the smarter, keener ones were all waiting farther upstream while the novices, likely first years, were all clustered about downstream. And Mya was between them.

As she peered into the water, she saw a little black and white egg, the green, fish-tailed egg of a Kelp Hippocampus, a white, winged Pegasus egg, a pink Axolotl egg, and... She squinted as a blue and purple egg came floating down, reached in, and scooped it out.

"Yes! Koi egg!" she crowed triumphantly, while her Direwolf Anghe wagged his tail, eager to see his companion and owner happy.

Mya stroked the smooth, slightly scaly shell of the blue and purple egg, relishing the smooth pearly texture, before putting it into the sack where she also kept her Fabari eggs, and went on into the mighty entrance of the Keep.

* * *

There were many people in the Keep, and some small shops lined the courtyards that were here and there. Some of the courtyards Mya passed through had fish ponds, where somebody else's koi swam and others dared not steal. Occasionally, Mya would catch the glimpse of somebody feeding the fish in the pond, or one of the many professors hurrying about, trying to get somewhere quickly. The first years were easy to spot—they went about the place wide-eyed, some holding their first Stream-born egg in their hands as they walked about.

As Mya walked past some of the older initiates, some peered at her from their variously colored hoods—blackish ones for the Dark Brotherhood society, blue for the Society of the Trident, greenish ones for the Herbalists, and various, other colored ones for the people who didn't belong to any society. Sometimes they seemed to recognize her, other times they didn't. Mya herself wanted to join the Society of the Trident, for what could be better for a koi-lover than to join a society that liked all things watery?

She gave some of them curt nods if she recognized them, while pretending to not notice their looks if she didn't know them. Some of them began bunching together, followed by a flurry of whispering and pointing. Mya ignored them. What harm would gossip do?

Mya went from one courtyard to another, conscious of where she was in the Keep at all times. It wouldn't do to get lost here. Her Direwolf stayed by her side constantly, only pausing to interact with somebody else's Direwolf when one showed up.

After another moment of walking, she found the right courtyard. This one was a little smaller than the others, for the rooms in this wing were slightly larger than standard, and she'd managed to acquire herself a spot. She headed through a wooden door that opened out into a long, dimly lit hallway lined with doors every fifteen feet or so. There was nobody in sight, so the hallway was quiet.

She began heading down the hall to her left briefly looking at each door number before continuing. With no people around, Anghe began sniffing at the bottoms of doors, occasionally making a huffy noise. Sometimes, squeals sounded from the other side of the door when he sniffed at it, but the Direwolf would ignore the sound.

When she found the right door, Mya produced a key from one of her hidden pockets and inserted it into the keyhole. A lock clicked, and she put away her key and pushed open the door.

Inside was a spacious, windowless room lit by a seemingly magically-created sphere floating in the center of the room, near the ceiling. The only other creatures inside were an egg floating in a large aquarium at the foot of a bed along with several little koi fish eagerly bumping their noses into the side of the glass, begging to be fed. The bed wasn't anything fancy, with a worn pillow and blanket made from fake fur lying over a simple mattress. The stone walls had a bluish tint to them, made by the light cast from the clear water in the aquarium, which didn't seem to have a visible filter. Rather, it seemed that the koi inhabitants were the ones keeping the water clean, coupled with the fact that the water came straight from the Stream itself.

Gently setting her sack of eggs on the table, Mya turned to Anghe and said, "You can go now, Anghe."

The Direwolf looked up, blinked, and then sniffed around a bit more before trotting out of the room.

Mya closed the door behind him, locking it as she went, and turned to the aquarium.

"Hey guys," she murmured, taking the lid off and setting it on the bed. "Haven't you gone to the lake yet?" She nodded at a half-hidden tube near the bottom of the tank, where the fish could swim through to get to Lake Lakira and back, granting them complete freedom and the ability to get somewhere safe really fast. It was magically created, almost, and would not break or be altered by any outside force.

As soon as the lid was well clear of the tank, one of the little koi leaped up from one end of the tank to the other, obviously showing off her sparkling scales. Another copied the first one's actions, making a shorter, but higher jump.

Mya sprinkled in some food for them from a nearby canister and watched them eat for a moment before scooping out the eggs she'd acquired earlier that day and letting them slide into the water. They sank a little, only to hover about halfway down. That was when Mya saw the other egg.

It closely resembled a koi egg, but was a pastel blue and peach hue, and it wasn't like any other koi egg she'd ever seen before from the Stream. She reached in to pick it up, hardly noticing as a tired little koi swam into the aquarium through the tube and began picking at the leftover tidbits floating on the surface, while two others left the tank in its place.

The eggshell was smooth, like any koi egg, with slight bumps here and there where the shell grew tiny scales. Could it be?

Mya looked up at the wall, where hung a poster she'd painted herself—on it were the types of creatures that you get from the Koi Pond, along with what their eggs looked like. Her eyes scanned the parchment until it found the Dragon Koi—great big pastel blue and peach colored fish with a little blue orb stuck on its forehead. And the egg image she'd painted looked exactly like the egg she held in her hands.

"You're a _Dragon Koi_!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Wow! When you grow, you'll be my second Dragon Koi so far!"

She gently placed the egg back into the water, sprinkled a little more food, and then began looking for some clue as to where the egg may have come from.

When she checked her desk, the papers there seemed the same as always: cluttered lists of reminders stuck to the wall, old letters, ink bottles both old and new, feather quills scattered here and there, constantly updated lists of current creature values—but nothing new. Mya cleared up the clutter a little, putting quills back in the quill-holder and making old, dried ink bottles disappear with her wand. She also got rid of the old reminders and letters that were no longer useful, and tidied up her value lists.

Then she went on to check her bed, both top and bottom—no note could've gotten there. Her aquarium's glass was also perfectly clean and devoid of fingerprints, much less notes. The walls, apart from the painted posters of various creatures and their eggs, were also bare.

"Guess I'll never know who this was from," she mused, trying to remember what day it was. "And today's not any holiday or event, nor any celebrated magi's birthday, much less mine."

She laid down on her bed, leaning against the wall and watching her baby koi swimming to and fro across the tank, occasionally leaping up into the air but never out. The tired one that had just come back seemed to have eaten his fill, and was now hidden underneath a fake cave decoration to rest. Mya knew that if she stuck her head into the water, one touch from the little koi would enable her to breathe normally.

She stayed like this for a few minutes, watching her fish come and go through the tube, until one of the almost full-grown ones (he would be taken to the pond in the Raza soon enough) came back with a piece of rolled up parchment in his mouth. He immediately swam to the top and jumped out as if to catch her attention, but Mya saw him anyway.

She swung herself off the bed and reached into the tank, where the koi opened his mouth and released the tiny scroll. Surprisingly, when she took her hand back the scroll was dry, not sopping wet. Whoever sent this probably placed a water-proofing spell on it.

Mya pulled apart the string that kept it together, and unrolled the note. On it, she read:

_I left a present for you. Do you like it? It took me awhile to get it, but you were worth it. - Anon_

Mya read it twice to be sure of what it said, and then half-jerked her hand towards her desk, as if reaching for a piece of paper and a quill, but then thought better of it. Whoever managed to find one of her koi among the thousands that lived in the lake just to send a message would be long gone by now. Even if she could find the sender, he or she likely wouldn't reply back, and it would've been even more unlikely that they'd sign their return message. That would've defeated the purpose of remaining anonymous. But with the fact that her koi had _just_ come in from the lake with the message proved that whosoever had entered her _locked_ door hadn't been gone for too long. Maybe just before she entered.

She put the small scroll on her table and turned back to look at some of her almost-grown koi.

"Tomorrow, we go to Raza," she whispered to them.


End file.
